Two page letter to the Duke of Devonshire giving orders and instructions to impress men into Her Majesty Service.

Press Gangs, two page letter signed by the Lord Justices to William Cavendish (1st Duke of Devonshire) giving orders on impressing men for the navy in the county of Derby, 18 January 1705. Signed by Duke of Somerset, the Earls of Pembroke, Stamford, Radnor, Bradford, Dartford, Poulett and 5 others. The letter lists that all straggling seaman, waterman, lighterman, bargeman and fisherman are impressed into the Her Majesty's Service and they should be marched to the nearest port and under no circumstance allow them to escape. It also states that the Duke should take care not to impress old, decrepit, crazy or unhealthy men only those who are young and fit for service are to be impressed.

Administrative / biographical background
Impressment, colloquially, "the press" or the "press gang", refers to the act of taking men into a military or naval force by compulsion, with or without notice. In Elizabethan times a statute regulated impressment as a form of recruitment, and with the introduction of the Vagabonds Act in 1597 men of disrepute (vagrants) found themselves drafted into service. In 1703 an act passed limiting the impressment of men under 18 years of age to those who were not apprenticed.